Tonight, Unreported World investigates
what has happened in Libya since the fall of Gaddafi seven months ago.
When the British Government backed the revolution they hoped to replace the barbarism of the old regime with democracy and the rule of law.
Peter Oborne travelled travelled to the capital, Tripoli, and found a country still riven by factionalism, militias and violence.
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Tripoli is ringed by checkpoints.
CAR HORN TOOTS
They're manned by gunmen from competing private armies.
Six months after the revolution, these armed groups,
who overthrew Colonel Gaddafi, are clinging to territory and power.
GUNSHOTS
CAR ACCELERATES
We've just run into a gun battle.
We were driving down the road.
There's a bunch of guys with guns and a gun battle broke out.
Police had tried to remove a militia roadblock.
They had been driven off in a hail of gunfire.
SIRENS
In Libya's capital, Tripoli, you can't escape the gunmen and their rivalries.
On the road to the airport I spotted a militia unit getting ready to fight.
I'm flanked on all sides by armed men, most won't let us film them.
They are waving weapons around, they've got mounted weapons
on the backs of trucks and they say they are poised to go in and defend the airport.
Abdul Razak was a fighter in the powerful Zintan militia.
In a fierce battle last year, they'd seized the country's main airport from Gaddafi forces.
Now, some of the fighters believed they were being tricked into withdrawal.
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What have you come here to do?
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The militia commander was in the VIP lounge.
It turned out Mokhtar Al Akhtar was negotiating a handover to the government.
In exchange, his men would be given jobs in the Ministry of Defence.
The handover was supposed to happen that day - but no-one had turned up.
Then a government official called.
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The handover had been postponed.
Mr Al Akhtar.
Salaam Aleikum.
Do you think the government is competent to run the airport now?
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What is your personal opinion, though?
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Across town, we found militiamen streaming into a government compound.
The interim government wants to persuade them to return to civilian life before election day later this month.
These men are all fighters who fought in the revolutionary struggle
and they have come to collect a cash payout to recognise their efforts.
Flush with oil money, the government was paying a bonus of at least £1,000 to each fighter.
These offices will distribute well over £1 million today,
and this is a process that has been going on for several weeks and will carry on for another month.
Across Libya, around £1 billion has reportedly been paid out,
but it hasn't brought stability.
TYRES SCREECH
It's early evening in the centre of Tripoli, and somebody has set up a roadblock just ahead.
We're off to see what's going on.
We've been blocked from getting up close to the roadblock
so we're walking round through these desolate streets.
GUNSHOTS
It's quite frightening here.
We just passed a young guy with a machine gun aiming wildly in the air then pointing his gun at us.
We managed to make it to the roadblock.
These militiamen were furious they hadn't been paid for their efforts in the war.
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What will you do if you don't get paid?
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There's a menacing feel, a very unstable feel, you don't feel things are under control at all at the moment,
and here we are in the centre of the capital city of Libya.
I wanted to investigate what was happening outside the capital.
We drove to the coastal city of Zuwara, 80 miles to the west.
SIREN
When we arrived, we found ourselves in a battle.
SIRENS
SHOUTING
SHOUTS AND DISTANT GUNFIRE
I'm just behind the frontline of an armed conflict between two rival militias.
There's constant gunfire and artillery going overhead.
There's clearly a very fierce fight indeed going on just down the road.
They were fighting a rival militia from the nearby town of Regdalin.
Like most armed groups across Libya,
these men were shopkeepers, mechanics and students,
civilians who'd come together during the revolution.
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Commander Bashir Hinish was directing fighters attacking a Regdalin neighbourhood one mile away.
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His men were meeting fierce resistance.
'Until the revolution, Bashir was a college administrator.'
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'Bashir said this was a lawless area 'and his people had to fight their own battles.'
They'd learned not to expect help from the government.
'We met 25-year-old English student and fighter, Ayoob Sofyan.
'He said this battle had been going on for three days.'
How many casualties have you sustained?
Till the moment there was 12, 12 have been martyred.
You've had 12 killed?
Yes, 12 killed, martyred, and more than 130 people have been wounded.
Some of them wounded badly.
'Ayoob claimed his militia were the true representatives 'of the revolution.
'He said the enemy in Regdalin were Gaddafi loyalists.'
We are fighting to free our land.
I mean, everyone, the government is saying Libya is liberated,
which is not, not all of it.
Here it is not liberated, a lot of Gaddafi loyalists are still right here.
They have been attacking Zuwara for months.
GUNSHOTS
Can you hear right now, they are shooting at us, bullets are passing, GUNSHOTS
Can you hear right now, they are shooting at us, bullets are passing,
but we are not afraid because we are tired of being afraid.
Fighting continued through the night.
ARTILLERY AND GUNFIRE
By dawn, the battle had claimed more than 20 lives, with hundreds wounded.
The two sides arranged a truce.
We crossed the frontline and entered the rival town of Regdalin.
CAR HORN TOOTS
'Moawiya Al-Mouawi said he was a leader in the Regdalin militia.
'He said all his men had done was defend their town.'
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Rocket launchers and machine guns, either looted from the army or smuggled in during the revolution, had devastated the area.
Both militias clearly had heavy weapons.
Looking round, I can see burnt out and smashed cars, burnt out buildings.
There's a very thick smell of explosives still, and there are tank casings and shells everywhere.
'In the absence of government authority, most towns are ruled 'by local military councils.'
'Ali Abdul Samaa was in charge of Regdalin.
'He denied the people here were Gaddafi loyalists.
'The conflict, he said, was about territory.'
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We were told there had been other clashes between the towns in the past six months.
Some claimed that battles like this are really about who controls nearby smuggling routes.
We returned to Zuwara.
The hospital was overwhelmed with injured fighters and civilians.
They only had basic facilities - doctors and nurses were doing what they could to treat the wounded.
'Omar Sha'ely was one of the people in charge.'
Are they all being treated here?
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Among the dead fighters was a 51-year-old shopkeeper called Shalgum Shalgum.
Amal Khamis was his widow.
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'Amal said Shalgum had survived the revolution but not the peace.'
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'In spite of their tragedy, 'Shalgum's brother Fouad said the town needed its militia.'
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'Shalgum's family tell us' he fought heroically in the battle against Gaddafi.
So he survived the revolution only to be killed by a militia from his neighbouring town.
Unless this problem of armed groups is brought under control,
many more Libyans look set to die in exactly the same way.
In the town of Gharyan, we'd been told civilians had formed another private army.
Our destination was a compound built by Gaddafi.
'The Gharyan militia had turned it into a detention centre.'
I'm Peter.
'The commander was Emad Sager.
'He told me he provided for the prisoners by stealing at gunpoint.'
What we can bring, we bring it by force.
Even the blankets and the mattresses most of them are by force.
We break into the storages of some, some companies, factories.
We go inside and take the blankets and mattresses and leave.
'As Gaddafi fought to stay in power,' he hired mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa.
Since then, thousands of black workers and suspected illegal immigrants have been rounded up by the militias.
'Over 1,000 of them were housed in this camp.'
How do you do?
Every spare bit of space is taken up with mattresses,
there's 12 people or so living here.
And it looks very cramped.
'The cells were hot and windowless.'
Do you spend all your time in this room or do you come out of it?
We spend all our time here.
If we want to eat we come out.
Except when you're eating?
After eating we come inside.
How long have you been here?
About two months.
Two months?
Two months...
'James Osadolor was from Nigeria - 'he'd been kept here for a month-and-a-half.'
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'He said there was a shortage of water 'and no one had washed for two weeks.
'Worse, the guards assaulted the prisoners.'
Put your hands up if you have been beaten?
Everybody here, everybody has been beaten.
What has happened here, there's a...
They bash him.
Bash him, see. They hit him on his back, you see.
'James had worked in Tripoli as a welder.
'Now he was accused of being an illegal immigrant.'
They say they don't need blacks here, that is the main reason
they are holding us, that they just want the whole country to be Libyans
and there's no Nigeria, no Ghana, no Mali, they don't need anybody,
they will be doing their work themselves, they don't need us any more.
Hello, I'm Peter.
'Another Nigerian, Eric Amukamara, told me 'he had worked in the country as a plasterer for 10 years.'
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'He was desperately worried about his family.'
His story is very moving.
He was picked up two months ago at a checkpoint, told he hadn't got right papers.
He's been in this jail for two months, the conditions, he says, are horrible.
Meanwhile his family is destitute because he can't earn money.
There has been no functioning court system in Libya since the revolution.
Many of these men face the prospect of being locked in these metal cells indefinitely.
Roughly 60 people live in this cell block here, it's fair to say they are pretty desperate men.
They really want their freedom.
'The commander admitted his men were untrained 'and should not be working as prison guards.'
Some of the prisoners have told us that they'd been beaten,
do you accept, do you agree with that?
We can't say that, because the only, the ones who cause problem.
Just the ones who cause...
Yeah, who cause problems, like sometimes they steal, we don't give them food.
He steals a blanket, we don't give them a blanket.
They say conditions are pretty brutal here.
I agree with them, they're brutal. Help them, please.
Our government, their government, the United Nations, come help them.
They suffer, yes, I agree with them. They suffer a lot.
'As I left, other prisoners begged me to tell their families 'where they were.'
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The revolution freed millions from fear and terror, but, in the new Libya, these men have lost everything.
With the judiciary largely paralysed since the revolution,
thousands of Libyans have also faced summary justice.
We met one of them.
He lived in hiding in a remote location.
'Walid wanted to stay anonymous.
'He said he was snatched off the streets of Tripoli 'by a militia last year.'
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'They accused him of being a Gaddafi loyalist as he hadn't 'fought in the revolution,
and took him to their detention centre.'
What happened after that?
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Walid believed the real motive for his kidnap was extortion.
They wanted his family farm.
Eventually, a guard took pity on him.
But his brother and uncle were still being held.
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We passed Walid's account to a human rights group.
He begged us not to speak to his kidnappers.
I'd like to go and confront the militia leader he says was responsible for all this torture,
but I daren't do that because his uncle and brother are still in that jail and he himself is in fear of reprisal.
When western governments backed the revolution last year,
they hoped to replace the barbarism of Gaddafi with democracy and the rule of law.
That ambition seems a long way off.
Throughout our time here in Libya, we've been hearing serious allegations of abuses carried out by the militias.
There aren't very many human rights activists here in Tripoli,
but we've tracked one down and we are on our way to see him now.
Nasser Hawari runs the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights.
He showed me evidence of atrocities committed since Gaddafi's overthrow.
Nasser is showing me the video of a dead body,
the body is very, very heavily marked and bruised.
There's a gigantic indentation on the right cheek.
It's very, very unpleasant and distressing to look at this.
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He also showed me photographs of a man found in Zuwara - the town where we'd witnessed fighting.
【】
'Nasser said that, with no proper system of law and order,
'the militias could use torture with impunity.'
Most people would say the world's a much better place
because Colonel Gaddafi has gone, but these cases show that
some of the most brutal practices of the old regime, unfortunately, still survive.
In the coming months, Libya does have a chance
to move away from this bloody post-revolutionary period.
Its huge oil wealth provides the means to start badly needed reconstruction.
Militia leaders are taking part in this month's elections.
So, for the first time in 33 years,
there's the possibility of a democratically elected government.
If that happens, perhaps Libyans can gain the peace that has so far eluded them.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.